"What a foolish thing to say," Liu Xing said. "You're weaker than a little lamb right now, and yet, you're implying you want to kill me. What if I kill you because of that?"

Yu Yongrui sneered. "We both know you wouldn't do that. Even if our encounter was brief, I already know you." He stared at Liu Xing, his eyes mocking and challenging. "You wouldn't kill me."

As he stared into his challenging eyes, he felt a flash of annoyance. It was true. He wouldn't kill without provocation. Unless Yu Yongrui tried to kill him or the women under his protection, he had no intention of killing him. Yet, when he saw Yu Yongrui's cold, condescending gaze, he tried to assess the situation more thoroughly.

Yu Yongrui, despite coming from the same sect, was not his friend. Hell, he had declared that if it benefitted him, he would kill Liu Xing. And wouldn't killing Liu Xing benefit Yu Yongrui? After all, Liu XIng was a competitor not only for the Heaven Severing Pill but also in the race. If he truly followed his own philosophy, it was only a matter of time before Yu Yongrui tried to kill him, and at that time, Liu Xing would be ready to kill him too. Still... wasn't it wise for him to kill Yu Yongrui right here, right now?

He began to cycle his qi, sending it through his qi paths in a slow, deliberate motion, ready to spring into any technique he wanted. Yu Yongrui, despite knowing Liu Xing had begun to cycle his qi, still stared back at him with his chin held high.

He tried to imagine the aftermath of the fight, where he had successfully bloodied his hands with Yu Yongrui's blood. Would he feel relief or regret? After a moment, he realized he would not feel relief. As for regret... perhaps there would be some, but it would not be all-consuming. After all, this was not the first time he had killed people.

Still, Liu Xing hesitated. While killing Yu Yongrui right here and now was logical, it didn't feel right. While he was a competitor, he was not truly an enemy, at least not yet.

Liu Xing decided to let go of the control of the qi inside his body.

"Thought so," Yu Yongrui snorted.

Liu Xing rose from his position, turned, and began walking toward the turtle's head. He wanted to sit there and think, although he was already lost in thought as he walked over the shell, which rose like a small hill.

He wondered about his decision and the reason he had chosen not to kill Yu Yongrui. It wasn't because of mercy or anything like that. It was because he didn't know if it was the correct decision overall.

Logically, it was the right decision, but emotionally, he felt it was wrong. Since there were two sides within him, he decided to be more careful and choose a path that gave him more leeway. Killing Yu Yongrui now would end this dilemma, but the other choice gave Liu Xing options. After all, just because he didn't kill Yu Yongrui now didn't mean he wouldn't kill him later.

As he passed the women who were sleeping soundly, he inhaled the fresh air and suddenly thought about the hundreds of cultivation novels he had read in the past. He thought about the decision all those protagonists would have made if they were in his situation. The answer came easily. All of them would have decided to kill Yu Yongrui right there and then. Most protagonists in eastern cultivation stories were ruthless, pragmatic, and opportunistic.

As he sat on the turtle's head, he realized that their ruthlessness and opportunistic nature were what allowed them to rise to prominence so quickly—aside from any special items or abilities they possessed. While their decisions sometimes backfired and plunged them into difficult situations, they always overcame them. He liked reading those stories and the thrill that came with them. Still, while their stories were fun, he could not follow their example thoroughly. He had his own morality, his own way of life and predisposition, and his wants and theirs differed slightly. He was the one living his life, and it would be wrong to follow an example that didn't sit right with him.

Still, it didn't mean that he couldn't extract wisdom from their ruthlessness and opportunistic tendencies. He just needed to know where to draw the line.

"A bottom line, huh," Liu Xing muttered. "What is my bottom line? What is my moral compass?"

He thought for a long time. The floating turtle statue moved beneath the glittering stars. As he steered the turtle towards a particular star, he realised that his moral compass was inconsistent. There were times when he had decided to kill robbers, but there were also times when he had let them go. Both groups of robbers had the same intention, yet his decisions were different.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

[He reflected on all the different scenarios where he had ended up killing people or sparing them, and soon found a fine line between all the people he had decided to kill.

When he met Pu He and his companions, he had spared them because he hadn't felt threatened by them. When he saw the people who were chasing Yang Liangyu, he killed them because they were threats to her. His vow to kill Wei Yi was a mix of several different emotions, one of them being hatred, yet a part of him had also decided to kill him because he was a threat to him and many, many others. He decided to kill the inner disciples because they wanted to kill him. And while his fight with Wang Miau had stemmed from hatred, once he learned that Wang Miau had changed, so many emotions swirled inside his heart that he had the thought that with this change, Wang Miau was no longer a threat.

Liu Xing blinked several times, trying to remember more moments where he had decided to kill or spare people. Then he glanced behind him, seeing Yu Yongrui, who sat silently and meditated, trying to recover his power.

Yu Yongrui was merely a cultivator at the peak of the Lock Opening realm. As he had stated before, Yu Yongrui was like a lamb he could slaughter easily. Even if Yu Yongrui had intended to kill him, since he was weaker, Liu Xing had felt that killing him was not urgent.

He realized that if Yu Yongrui were at the Core Splitting realm, he would have hesitated to bring him along on his turtle shell, let alone let him sit there peacefully.

As he thought about this, he felt his heart beating a little faster, his eyes widening slightly.

All those decisions—to kill or to spare people—stemmed from how threatening his enemies were, either to him or to the people around him.

This revelation was surprising, even for him. "Is that how I've always thought?"

Liu Xing pinched his chin and thought, making sense of this revelation. He soon realized that it was true.

"This is… how should I proceed with this line of thought?"

Was this way of thinking right or wrong?

As Liu Xing sat with his back straighter, his eyes shone with an intensity as if he had been jolted awake, he began to mull over this question and the nature of himself.

The way he spared and killed people was, in a sense, sensible. It was defensive; he waited for people to become a threat before he dealt with them, and he was content with that. If people didn't threaten him or others, then he would not attack them.

"But it wasn't without its problems, either," Liu Xing muttered.

There were several ways people could become a threat to him. The most obvious way was if they were hostile and stronger than him, or at least on par with him. Since they had the ability to kill him, he couldn't just sit around and wait to be killed. On the other hand, if they were weaker, he would likely dismiss them.

He thought that this way of thinking was quite dangerous. It meant that as his power grew stronger, he would spare more and more people. Some of them, perhaps, would turn their lives around, like Pu He and his companions, but there was a chance that his enemies would just build up resentment. If many people hated him, there was also a chance they would band together. Individually, they were not threats, but together, they could kill him.

However, if he thought about it differently, it meant that the stronger he became, the less threatening others were to him. This gave him more leeway for resolving conflicts without killing his enemies outright. In a way, the stronger he became, the less blood he needed to shed. His power became a deterrent rather than a tool of judgment. He thought it was certainly a path to follow if he wanted to be good, kind, and merciful.

"What a revelation," Liu Xing said with a flabbergasted expression. To think he would discover an aspect of himself he never knew he had was a surprise.

Still, this way of life—sparing and killing people based on them being a threat, and indirectly by their power—was flawed. He wanted to be a good person, true, but he thought this way of thinking wasn't right, either. After all, it only worked if he was the strongest, and not even the current patriarch of the Purple Moon Clan could claim that he was the strongest and couldn't be threatened by other Immortals.

This way of thinking was naive, and he didn't want to be a fool who would get stabbed in the back. However, he didn't want to become a ruthless person who would massacre an entire clan and sect, either.

Liu Xing mulled it over and over, when suddenly, he felt something bumping into his bubble of qi.

He raised an eyebrow and began to walk to the edge of the turtle's head. There, he sharpened his gaze and saw something surfacing from the sea, water cascading around the small shape. Soon, the little white shark showed its face, and Liu Xing smiled.

Tide Walker was cute. It loved roaming around like a little kid, and its face was expressive, making it easy for Liu Xing to read its mood. The last time, Tide Walker had resurfaced from the sea to showcase a blue and shiny rock from the depths.

The little white shark started swimming around his qi bubble. To prevent the bubble destruction, he opened a small hole through which Tide Walker passed easily. But as it floated toward him, he saw that its expression was neither happy nor excited. Rather, its black eyes shone frantically under the starry sky, and it looked back several times as if anxious about something.

Seeing this, Liu Xing's smile vanished. He knew that Tide Walker had found something that's not exciting or beautiful.

Soon, the little shark circled him, bumped its face against his cheek, and then swam back the way it had come. It seemed to want him to follow.

Liu Xing's heart began to tighten. He looked at the star and wondered whether this was the thing Lady Oracle said he would encounter.

He hoped it wasn't anything too dangerous.

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